Friday, February 8, 2013

According to an email alert sent out by the Home School Legal Defense Association, a new bill is being introduced in the South Carolina State House of Representatives that would threaten the ability of South Carolinians to effectively and legally homeschool their children as well as further reducing choice in terms of which homeschooling option is selected.

impose state testing on all homeschool students in both the South Carolina Association of Independent Home Schools (SCAIHS) and all homeschool associations.Additionally, results of the annual review of these organizations by the South Carolina Department of Education would have to be reported to the legislature. Further, these organizations would be required to provide the name of each student being homeschooled to their respective school districts, instead of providing just the number of students being homeschooled as is now required.

HLSDA continues by writing,

But this is not the worst part of this terrible bill. It would ELIMINATE membership in a homeschool association under Section 59-65-47 of the South Carolina Code as an option for homeschooling on July 1, 2014. No longer would South Carolina homeschoolers be able to exercise what is known as the "third option" for complying with the compulsory attendance law.

Unfortunately, while the HLSDA’s email alert may seem a bit too much to believe, a simple reading of the bill proves that all the claims made by the home schooling organization are, in fact, very true.

In regards to the first claim that the bill would impose state testing on all homeschooling organizations, Section 1 (6) erases all doubt as to the veracity of the claims made by the HLSDA.

The section reads,

students must participate in the annual statewide testing program and the Basic Skills Assessment Program approved by the State Board of Education for their appropriate grade level. The tests must be administered by a certified school district employee either with public school students or by special arrangement at the student's place of instruction, at the parent's option. The parent is responsible for paying the test administrator if the test is administered at the student's home

Adding insult to injury, the bill also states that if the parents should opt to have the test administered at home, the parents are responsible for the cost of administration.

Obviously, by imposing state testing requirements upon homeschooled students, the ability to ensure that state-sponsored propaganda is still implanted into the minds of children is solidified. State tests, by definition, will contain state-based curriculum by which students will be measured, a policy that will necessitate the teaching of such curriculum by parents, whatever their preference, to at least some degree.

Likewise, in regards to the claim that homeschooled students’ names will be reported to their respective school districts, Section 2 (C) states clearly,

By January thirtieth of each year, the South Carolina Association of Independent Home Schools shall report the numbername and grade level of children home schooled through the association to the children's respective school districts to ensure compliance with the provisions of Section 59-65-10.

The most frightening claim made by the HLSDA, however, is that membership in a homeschool association would be eliminated with the passage of HB 3478. Yet, while the legislation does not state outright that homeschool associations themselves will be banned, the bill does state that associations with less than 50 members will no longer be considered acceptable as meeting the requirements of existing law.

The bill states in Section 3 (A),

In lieu of the requirements of Section 59-65-40 or Section 59-65-45, parents or guardians may teach their children at home if the instruction is conducted under the auspices of an association for home schools which has no fewer than fifty members and meets the requirements of this section.

Because the only acceptable homeschooling associations are those with 50 or more students (effectively a private school), this clause concretely eliminates the traditional notion of homeschooling which takes place within the family home.

All in all, HB 3478 is not merely another step in the corralling of Americans into the prison-style indoctrination camps known as American public schools, it is the evisceration of homeschool rights in South Carolina. This, of course, is merely one more step in the total removal of parental rights altogether nationally and worldwide.

If you are in South Carolina, please contact your Representative immediately and express your objection to HB 3478. Even if you are not a resident of South Carolina, please call the individuals listed below and explain to them the moral and legal objections to the passage of this bill.

Please take special notice that Norman D. “Doug” Brannon (R-38) is the main culprit for this insult to parental rights as he is the Representative who proposed it to begin with. Interestingly enough, Brannon is also associated with the most notorious and unconstitutional common courts in the nation, Family Court, so his lack of understanding or concern for the welfare of children, families, and parental rights should come as no surprise.

With this in mind, his office deserves special attention and he can be contacted at: (803) 212-6876. He can be emailed at this address. Remember, a person to person interaction is always more effective than email.

The members of the House Education and Public Works Committee and their contact information is as follows:

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor's Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of three books, Codex Alimentarius -- The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, and Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident. Turbeville has published over 190 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville's podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

22 comments:

We are a 3rd Option homeschooling family here in SC, and are livid over this attempt to infrige upon our rights. Thank you, Brandon, for shining light on this issue, and thank you all for emails and calls to the people responsible. I dare say these legislators dont know the can of worms theyve opened with this one. In a state with so many other problems, why are they trying to make this an issue? Why the need to track and monitor, SC? We already have to pay taxes that benefit schools our kids dont get any use out of. We dont have the benefit of using lab equipment, textbooks, or other resources, so why must we pay for them?What good does standardized testing do? None! Study after study proves it is a wholly innacurate way to measure a child's knowledge and skills. I imagine it would be possibly be of benefit in raising test scores statewide, since homeschooled kids tend to score higher. Also, I doubt the ability of the state to insure the safety of such a database, seeing as we just recently suffered the largest hack of social security and tax data, idk, in the us, ever???!!

That said, I have no problem with a basic proficiency test for the parents who will do the homeschooling. Not political, or social or religious.........those are the private domain of the family. But basic math, reading, grammar should be required skills for parents to posses.

Here is a test from what may be considered the good old days of the USA. I highly recommend you take some time to look it over. The nation is a shell of its former self if this test is any indication of what kids know now and knew back then.Home schooling is a right, but responsibility used to be a cornerstone of the nation. Parents need to be responsible too.

We can't have good docile servants without first training them inside gov't-controlled public indoctrination centers. Every minion must be trained to accept their position in our bank-controlled matrix called "life". Individualism and independent thought is not acceptable to majestic world leaders. Since the inception of the Dept. of Education in the early 1960s, the US standard of living has been in decline because of the teachings in "Ignorance 101". See Charlotte Iserbyte's YT expose titled "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America". Public education is a F'N joke at your expense!

State control of education means indoctrination by definition. This is a direct attack upon the family make no mistake. Go back and study history. Horace Mann, Dewey and the Prussian education system are where to look.

I respectfully disagree. Here in SC, parents are required to have a high-school diploma or GED in order to homeschool their hild(ren). The assumption being that if a parent was able to pass the GED exam or exit exams for high school graduation, they have those basic skills.

All children are homeschooled. The only variation exists in the degree to which they are. Parents who are forced to send their children to the government schools must train their children in the best way to get through the government school system without acquiring a criminal record. In the evenings and on weekends, the parents must teach the children reading, writing, and arithmetic. Equipped with these basic skills a child is perfectly capable of educating himself, so long as no one prevents him from doing so.

EMERGENCY READ FOR ALL HOME SCHOOLERS: PLEASE READ THE BOOK "Dumbing us Down" by John Gatto. Also read: "Weapons of Mass Instruction" by the same author.

Any homeschooling family must understand WHY schools exist (in all forms of forced education). Gatto explains it. He was an award winning teacher in NY schools before he realized what was happening in "school" .

Another demonic looney toon lacky boy for the u s coporation. We have dennis moss up here & he wants to build a nuke plant that duke (dookie powers like austin powers) admits they dont need, it is going to double or even tripple our power bills. dennis & his good ole boys back in cherokee county DONT WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT THEY ARE GOING TO GET 70 MILLION A YEAR IN PROPERTY TAXES FOR him & his GOOD OLE COUNTRY CLUB BOYS WILL HAVE TO SPEND ON THEMSELVS. We pay for it & the bunch of devils like jim rogers, dennis moss line their pockets. It is beyond belief. GOD please help us.

Depressing article and only another sign of the times we live in. We homeschool our two children and once we got out of the public school scene only then we realized(and the KIDS!) just how much information they were missing. Real life skills, too, because all those hours in a day were being eaten up with useless information and they were too tired when they got home to really do anything else with us.

I am all for homeschooling and I am all for testing the child each year. The reason I believe in the testing is because some parents are not teaching there child much of anything at home and are using homeschooling because they are to lazy to get there kids dressed in the morning for public school and too lazy to drive them or put them on a bus. They just want to be able to sit at home all day wearing jogging pants and rollers in there hair while there kids run around the house playing instead of getting any education. Hopefully this will weed out those type of parents and be a benefit to the children. My child is now in private school but I am looking towards homeschooling in the next year or two.

Anonymous, are you serious? Homeschooling provides an all-day education for the child. Homeschooling parents aren't lazy, we work very, very hard to provide our children the BEST education and we tailor it to their needs, interests, learning style and appropriate grade level. We reserve the parental rights to homeschool our children. Do you have any idea how much homeschool parents spend a year for supplies, field trips and activities for their children? Hundreds of dollars, thousands if out of state or out of country field trips are reserved through homeschool associations! Our children experience culture that public school children do not. Please don't comment or judge homeschooling parents on a topic you know nothing about.

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